In the field of digital television broadcasting, data such as video and audio is packetized, and then multiplexed in a synchronously reproducible format. As a packet format with a variable length structure, for example, a type length value (TLV) format has been known.
At the time of transmission of the multiplexed stream including a plurality of variable length packets, a transmission side divides the multiplexed stream into data blocks (simply referred to as block below) in error correction processing unit and transmits the block as adding an error correction code to each block. At this time, a block boundary and a packet boundary do not particularly coincide with each other, and a single packet may straddle the plurality of blocks. Furthermore, a single block may contain a plurality of packets.
On the reception side, the error correction processing is performed on each received block, and the blocks obtained as a result of the error correction processing are coupled to each other to obtain the multiplexed stream. In Non-Patent Document 1, it is specified that in a case where the error correction processing of the reception block is not correctly performed on the reception side, all the packets included in the block, including the packets provided across the previous and the following blocks, are invalidated (replaced with null packet) or discarded.